Ableton Forum

There's no such as zero latency hardware either.

Tarekith wrote:There's no such as zero latency hardware either.

This +1

And if you really want to work with a hardware sampler as your main instrument cherish it and learn how to work on the internals on your own. My sample button (F1) key and 0 key are losing response so I am ordering tact switches and doing the soldering myself. I'm gonna keep servicing my gear until the mother board fries!

Octatrack - performance sampler!

I'll never understand why people get all sentimental over old technology.

I don't miss 8 and 12 bit hardware samplers with sub-CD fidelity. Samplers used to be crazy expensive now you can get pretty much any sampler used for $200 or less.

So if you dig that sound, go buy one and return to the glory days of floppies, SCSI hard drives, MIDI sample dumps, etc.

Tarekith wrote:There's no such as zero latency hardware either.

True, but the speed of light was good enough for most pro-sumer music makers to make a decent fist of it back in the day.

Ensoniq FTW!!

Every time I think that maybe I should finally sell the ol' ASR-10 rack since it doesn't see much use I fire it up "one last time" and am promptly reminded why I never sell it - because it's simply a fantastic sounding piece of kit.

beatmunga wrote:

Tarekith wrote:There's no such as zero latency hardware either.

True, but the speed of light was good enough for most pro-sumer music makers to make a decent fist of it back in the day.

Hardly the speed of light, your typically hardwre synths has between 3-10ms of latency for things like keyboard scanning, etc. Not all that different from a decent softsynth set up.

Tarekith wrote:

beatmunga wrote:

Tarekith wrote:There's no such as zero latency hardware either.

True, but the speed of light was good enough for most pro-sumer music makers to make a decent fist of it back in the day.

Hardly the speed of light, your typically hardwre synths has between 3-10ms of latency for things like keyboard scanning, etc. Not all that different from a decent softsynth set up.

Aaah, you mean digital hardware, not all audio hardware (analog desks for instance).

Tarekith wrote:

beatmunga wrote:

Tarekith wrote:There's no such as zero latency hardware either.

True, but the speed of light was good enough for most pro-sumer music makers to make a decent fist of it back in the day.

Hardly the speed of light, your typically hardwre synths has between 3-10ms of latency for things like keyboard scanning, etc. Not all that different from a decent softsynth set up.

Acoustic hardware has some latency. The hammer strikes a chord 5-10ms after striking the piano key.

Even analog desks have some latency. Let's not forget that sound travels roughly 1 foot per millisecond in a typical room. So complaining about 5 ms latency is like complaining that you can't play because your speakers are 5 feet from your ears.

Tarekith wrote:Even analog desks have some latency. Let's not forget that sound travels roughly 1 foot per millisecond in a typical room. So complaining about 5 ms latency is like complaining that you can't play because your speakers are 5 feet from your ears.

That's not a property of the desk though, is it? Your decent soft synth plus 5 feet of air molecules would double this.

Probably still not too much of a problem.

For me, and I'm guessing many others, latency never seemed to be an issue until we started using computers for music beyond MIDI. Before that, If a piece of hardware sounded out of time when you played it, you got it exchanged or refunded. Science and figures didn't enter into it. This happened to me once, with a cheap Cheetah sampler. All the other racks of keyboards, modules, drum machines, samplers and processors I ever owned were as tight as a gnats chuff, and that's with rigidly quantized electronic music. And my analog desks didn't start sounding late if I used a bus or started adding more EQ...

I'm all for progress and the benefits are generally worth it. But let's not pretend it isn't an issue that sometimes rears it's head in a way that wasn't really an issue before.

beatmunga wrote:That's not a property of the desk though, is it?

Well it is - I mean, the bigger the mixing desk in front of you, the further away your speakers are...

bastien wrote:

beatmunga wrote:That's not a property of the desk though, is it?

Well it is - I mean, the bigger the mixing desk in front of you, the further away your speakers are...

Quite. But not if you adopt the recommended 'zero latency' listening posture of sitting on the desk with your eardrum resting against the speaker cone.

Anyway, what about if the mixing desk is moving towards you/away from you repeatedly on the back of a truck? The Doppler effect is a bitch to mix to, let alone tune a guitar to.

And anyway anyway anyway anyway what if you are travelling at great speed and relativity kicks in and time starts to slow down etc etc etc

astromass wrote:my sp-404sx has made me not use ABLETON! The loose feel of resampling and the fun effects have me in dream land!
loving it!!!

Saw a great little gig the other day where a duo were using this to trigger and mash up vocal samples on the fly over some 'live sequencing'.

Could have done something similar with software and a controller but they admitted they had more fun!

You're looking in the wrong places, lots of talented people playing vinyl sets and using hardware samplers these days.